I am senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News. I write about energy and environment issues, frequently focusing on global warming. I have presented environmental analysis on CNN, CNN Headline News, CBS Evening News, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and several national radio programs. My environmental analysis has been published in virtually every major newspaper in the United States. I studied atmospheric science and majored in government at Dartmouth College. I obtained my Juris Doctorate from Syracuse University.

As Carbon Dioxide Levels Continue To Rise, Global Temperatures Are Not Following Suit

New data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are continuing to rise but global temperatures are not following suit. The new data undercut assertions that atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing a global warming crisis.

NOAA data show atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose 2.67 parts per million in 2012, to 395 ppm. The jump was the second highest since 1959, when scientists began measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

Global temperatures are essentially the same today as they were in 1995, when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were merely 360 ppm. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose 10 percent between 1995 and 2012, yet global temperatures did not rise at all. Global warming activists are having a difficult time explaining the ongoing disconnect between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures.

This isn’t the first time in recent years that global temperatures have disobeyed the models presented by global warming activists. From the mid-1940s through the mid-1970s, global temperatures endured a 30-year decline even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose nearly 10 percent. From 1900 through 1945, by contrast, global temperatures rose rapidly despite a lack of coal power plants, SUV’s, and substantial carbon dioxide emissions.

Remarkably, global warming activists are spinning the ongoing rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, along with the ongoing lack of global temperature rise, as evidence that we are facing an even worse global warming crisis than they have been predicting.

“The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air jumped dramatically in 2012, making it very unlikely that global warming can be limited to another 2 degrees as many global leaders have hoped,” the Associated Press reported yesterday.

Actually, the fact that temperatures remain flat even as carbon dioxide levels continue to rise is a devastating rebuke to assertions that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are causing a global warming crisis.

On a related front, the NOAA data amplify the futility of imposing costly carbon dioxide restrictions on the U.S. economy in the name of fighting global warming. U.S. carbon dioxide emissions declined 10 percent during the past decade, yet global emissions rose by more than 30 percent.

Regardless of the future pace of ongoing reductions in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, global carbon dioxide emissions will continue to rise. Even if the United States committed economic suicide by imposing all or most of the carbon dioxide restrictions advocated by global warming activists, the ensuing U.S. carbon dioxide reductions would amount to merely a drop in the bucket compared to the flood of emissions increases by the world as a whole and by developing nations such as China and India in particular.

Fortunately, as the new NOAA data show, and as global warming ‘skeptics’ have observed all along, rising carbon dioxide emissions are having only a modest impact on global temperatures and are not creating a global warming crisis.

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This argument is so single minded. Its not about whether the US reducing its CO2 emissions would have a significant impact alone on the total reduction in emissions, its the Global political influence that the US has that would encourage other Goverments to follow suit which would then make an enormous difference. The US’s refusal to make any pledges to significantly reduce its CO2 emissions acts as a massive deterent to developing economies to do the same. Your argument is incredibly short term as well, this isnt something that will make us wake up tomorrow to an apocalypse, this is an ongoing and gradual change that will impact the US and worlds food security, especially developing countries over the next 100 years or more. You talk as though a 10% change in just 10 years is not signicant, but this is the blink of an eye and a continued increase on this scale may not have a major influence now, but will do very soon if it continues. I hate the bias and poorly referenced information that you use that makes you think the US should not have any part to play in reducing CO2 emissions.

The U.S. definately should not be regulating CO2 emissions. Wasting money on potentially harmful regulations that may not improve or have any affect on the environment should not be given one iota of consideration until the science is settled. Clearly, the science is not settled.

Why do you believe the USA can influence other countries? In developing countries where 70% of all CO2 is emitted, they aren’t going to stop using wood or coal for cooking or heating just because the US does. If their life/livelihood depends on energy from these sources and they can’t afford alternative energy, that is what will drive behavior not US behavior.

No, deforestation is not fine, and it does affect CO2 levels. But it’s the deforestation that does that, not the act of burning the wood.

My understanding is that the purpose of most deforestation is to clear the land for other uses, not for the fuel. I’m willing to be corrected on that, though. It’s not something I’ve studied very much.

jhoptoad – I am no expert either but I have done some investigation. The UN has incentivized the removal of forest and food cropland for the growth of biofuels. Food farmers have been/are being murdered and indigenous peoples are being driven from their land under this UN sanctioned program to develop biofuels mainly as a source for European carbon credits via the pretense that biofuels lower CO2 (another topic altogether).

Also I’m sure you heard that Brazil has removed millions of acres of forest to plant crops for their ethanol fuel program. So a great deal of deforestation is due to biofuel development.

In my view it seems destructive to waste land and water resources for fuel when many countries are already struggling with lack of water and food.

I usually only cite Peer reviewed studies but I’m cutting myself slack and I offer you this article as a starting point in pursuit of your own answers on this.